Installation artist Shih Chieh Huang transforms spaces with everyday objects. His most recent project “EX-I-09″ currently on show at the Beall Center for Art + Technology focuses on exploring the unusual evolutionary adaptations undertaken by creatures that reside in inhospitable conditions.

Huang creates analogous ecosystems made from common, everyday objects. “I source my wholly synthetic materials from the mundane objects that comprise our modern existence: household appliances, zip ties, water tubes, lights, computer parts, motorized toys and the like. The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for locomotion; Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input. ”

The exhibition is on till June 6th 2009

Here are a number videos of installations and sculptures on the theme of artificial life which won awards at VIDA last year. Via wmmna

Mission eternity sarcophagus

Etoy.corporation launched the Mission Eternity Project in 2005, foregrounding on the one hand respect for the human longing to survive in some way after death, and on the other a sense of irony about dated sci-fi fantasies we contrive to satisfy that desire. The Sarcophagus is one materialization of this project. It is a mobile sepulchre that holds and displays portraits of those who wish to have their informational remains cross over into a digital afterlife. The size of a standard cargo container that can travel to any location in the world, the Sarcophagus has an immersive LED screen covering its walls, ceiling and floor. There, interactive digital portraits can be summoned via mobile phone or web browser from virtual capsules that are stored in the shared memory of thousands of networked electronic devices of Mission Eternity Angels (people who contribute a small part of their personal storage capacity to the mission, currently 765 of them; to date, 2 volunteers have been accepted for encapsulation).

The data spectres that populate this tenuous memorial space are composed of details of lives lived, in visual, audio and text fragments. But when they are summoned in lo-res pixellated form in the Sarcophagus, they resemble one merged personality. The massing of details that we find in archives and records that keep the dead with us has a similar compositing effect, yet the Sarcophagus is also very unlike those. It gives us access to a novel social world generated among networked computer users who have a common goal of keeping something alive, which can invoke intense feelings such as care and wonder.

ALAVS 2.0

Jed Berks’ Autonomous Light Air Vehicles combine many of the themes of artificial life and multi-agent robotics research in an accessible and elegant public presentation. These include capable powered navigation and obstacle avoidance, organized multi-agent behaviour (such as flocking), discernable (quasi) intelligent individual behaviour, and interaction with other (quasi) intelligent agents, i.e., people. Connecting these agendas with more contemporary interest in mobile and locative technologies, Berk has implemented human-ALAV communication via mobile phone technology. The rigors of such a project must not be elided.

While robots in research-lab contexts often exhibit remarkable capabilities, they are just as often delicate, unreliable and require the constant attention of one or several highly trained staff. A project like ALAVs must exhibit its qualities in the general public, must inform and entertain, and at the same time be robust and resilient to the unpredictabilities of unusual architectures and architectural materials, weather, children and crowds (and sometimes, animals) – influences which are almost always filtered out in the controlled environment of the lab.

The ALAVs achieve all this, while remaining lighter than air, an achievement in itself given the weight of batteries and other components. The ALAVs are beguilingly delicate translucent agents which drift and float in a most un-robotic way. Videos

In search of flexible buildings – Kengo Kuma uses the term “weak architecture”. His teahouse does not rise up from the ground as a fixed wooden construction, but unfolds as an airborne ephemeral structure. When a ventilation system is activated, the teahouse swells into shape like a white textile blossom. In its interior, comprising a surface of approximately twenty square metres, are nine tatami mats, an electric stove for the water kettle, and a preparation room.

Integrated LED technology allows the use of the teahouse at night; the interior can be heated by way of the membrane. The Teehouse of Kengo Kuma is situated in the garden of Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt.

via luminapolis

Thanks to Joe for the Photos

visualisation of how a waterfall image would look projected on to Canary Wharf.

Thanks to this article I was pleased to find out about a new group of artists and architects called bodydataspace ( b>d>s) created by Ghislaine Boddington and Armand Terruli who are exploring ‘the integration of interactive and body-intuitive interfaces into public sites. Bodydataspace have proposed that Canary Wharf,  London’s tallest building 235m, have a giant projected waterfall cascading down its facade. The waterfall would not be a computer generated animation but a real-time projection of Angel Falls in Venezuela. the world’s highest free-falling waterfall at 979m.

BDS’s entry to the Lift New Parliament competition was for an inexpensive demountable structure-cum-projection-screen. Audiences inside these mobile venues — in London and Namibia, for instance — could be digitally connected

Ghislaine Boddington is an artist, director, curator and presenter, a specialist in dance/performance and the evolution of body responsive technologies, virtual physical body networks and interactive interfaces. Previously Ghislaine was director and founding member of the London based sound/movement research unit shinkansen  (1989-2004). Armand Terruli is an architect of fifteen years who has diversified his design output through interactive exhibition design, audio/visual work and into responsive environments. Over the years Armand has notably designed and project managed galleries at the National Maritime Museum, the Saudi Arabian Pavilion at Lisbon Expo 1998 and the Faith Zone at the Millennium Dome.

Body Data Space’s 3m diameter balloon acts as a projection screen for digital images. It is kept inflated by an integral fan at the top, but is supported by lightweight metal cabling.

Completed a couple of weeks ago at the Materials & Applications research and exhibition site in Los Angeles, I have been meaning to post ‘Bubbles‘ after following its rapid development and construtction on the supporting blog that documented the project. Bubbles was created by Michael Fox, Scott Franklin, Axel Kilian, Miao Miao, Juintow Lin, Darius Miller, and a number of volunteers.

The interactive installation is a spatially adaptable pneumatic environment at an urban scale. The installation consists of large air-bags or "bubbles" that inflate and deflate in reaction to visitors pushing or bumping the lower inflated volume of each pair. As visitors enter and move through the installation, they must navigate through the lightweight 8’ diameter spheres that fill the space. When the bubbles are bumped, sensors initiate a chaotic exchange of air between the spheres. When no visitors are present, the system returns to its stand-by state: the lower bubble in the pair refillls with air and awaits another interaction.

also see my post on Michael Fox’s talk at GSM2 ealier this year

images taken by Kiat Tan  

Commissioned for the Singapore Biennale 2006, Open Burble is the most recent public art work of Usman Haque. It is a further development of his earlier well known Sky Ear project where a non-rigid carbon-fibre structure, embedded with one thousand glowing helium balloons, mobile phones, sensor circuits and LEDs responsed to electromagnetic waves creating a floating "cloud" of light that revealed the natural electromagnetism of our environment, and also how our mobile phone calls and text messages delicately affect the new and existing electromagnetic fields.

Sky Ear 2004

Open Burble adopts the technology of Sky Ear but explores a more intuitive way to enable people to engage directly with the tactile experience of flying the cloud. 'Participants will divide into groups in order to assemble about 140 hexagonal "clouds" into a complete Burble, built to such a scale that, when inflated with helium, it will soar upwards like Jack's beanstalk.'

Building a module of Open Burble structure, the final construct will be 10 times as big

Just as the participants are the generators of the Burble's 60m tall form, so too are they the ones to control it. They hold on to it using handles with which they may position the Burble as they like. They may curve in on themselves, or pull it in a straight line – the form is a combination of the crowd's desires and the impact of wind currents varying throughout the height of the Burble. The Burble will move, rustle, tangle, fold in on itself and create turbulence as the wind catches it like a sail. Suddenly, the entire construction will ignite with colour, sparkling in the evening sky.

These images some some night testing of 1/10th of the whole piece.

As people on the ground shake and pump the handle bars of the Burble, they will see their movements echoed as colours through the entire system. They will see their own individual fragments, perhaps even identifying design choices they have made. Their invididual contributions will become an integral part of a spectacular, ephemeral experience many times their size that they have come together to produce.

Concept image

Open Burble will premiere this coming Friday September 1st. at the opening of the Singapore Biennale. I wish I could go but I'm at Ars Electronica so if anyone does get to see it please let me know what you thought of it and send me some images.

Also involved at stages in the project were Rolf Pixley – algorithmist / dynamic chromaticist; Fred Guttfield and Kei Hasegawa – detail designers; & Susan Haque – logistics

The Burble is constructed from:

• Over 1 km of 6.35mm carbon fibre rods
• Over 1 km of Excel D12 high performance sailing rope
• Approx. 1000 latex balloons (24" and 36")
• Approx. 1000 fishing lock-swivel clips
• Approx. 1000 Sky Ear boards by Senseinate/Seth Garlock

I’ve finally got round to recovering interactive architecture dot org and I’m pleased to be able to get back to blogging by introducing my most recent research into Constructing Interactive Reconfigurable Space. Collaborating with Paul Burres a fellow student of mine at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) we created the ‘Angels‘ Project as a way of investigating more closely some ideas that grew out of a building proposal we put together earlier this year.

Video

The ‘Angels‘ project questions the nature of fixed architecture and looks at the possibilities of an architecture lighter than air capable of sheltering us and even bringing communities together. Acting as either individual agents or flocking together to create large architectural constructs, they inhabit the world around us both within buildings and outdoors creating dynamically responsive architectures in real-time.

Summary PDF

Detailed Description of Research PDF  

Our current iteration has a simple set of behaviors reacting to human gesture, proximity and conversation, future iterations will investigate learning algorithms so that the Angels can adapt to their environment. In its current form the “Angels” act as individuals but the potential for these to structurally network is a continuing part of our investigation.  

Our investigation additionally explored suitable forms of notation to express interaction in space. Initial drawings described the motion paths of the Angels and Inhabitants and were later followed by notation that correlated statistical data. Using the Angels onboard Vision System transmitted wirelessly to a local computer we processed real-time data of conversation space using a piece of software we developed in MaxMSP Jitter that generated formal representations to support our recording and notation of the interactions that occurred. These projections also provided an added form of feedback when projected into the conversation space. 

See Website  

via wmmna